


What She Left

by crownofplanets



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-10-05 21:45:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10317632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownofplanets/pseuds/crownofplanets
Summary: The boys didn’t talk anymore. They’d avoid their eyes because they could still see OA in each other. Their invisible selves were now raw, and blood-crimson, and flesh and bones to the naked eye. They couldn’t bare it.All but one.





	1. Empty skies and empty houses

After OA’s death, the abandoned house remained abandoned for a long time. It stood silent in the night, like a painful reminder of what had happened, its hollow windows staring back at people with pit-like eyes. People wanted it to be demolished, burnt down, destroyed. The house was a dark stain in an otherwise perfect neighborhood —of course, people only thought of the outside: all those polished façades hid tragedies and secrets behind their thick, wooden doors. 

None of the five wanted to lay foot in the house. There were too many memories, too much pain. Bathtubs and heaters and candles now reminded them of her.

After the incident, and the police reports, and the avoiding of newspeople, the doctors recommended them all therapy: BBA went sometimes, if she was feeling up for it. Because she knew that the man wanted to hear about OA, she barely spoke of her. Instead, she used her brother as a way to keep the therapist busy. Buck’s parents —well, his father, really— had insisted he went, but he’d refused, guessing his father hoped a professional would 'dissuade him' from being trans. Refusal earned him, in return, a long discussion (is it a discussion if only one person yells?) filled to the brim with deadnaming and misgendering. French’s mother wasn’t aware of his son’s issues, that he had been gone for most nights for the better part of a month, meeting with the most unlikely group of people. She only knew he'd gotten into trouble for something, and never forgot to remind her son of how disappointed she was. Jesse had no parents who _could_ be aware of his issues, and his sister was usually too high to notice any of it. Steve did as he pleased, like he’d always done. 

Everything was different now.

Once the school had somewhat recovered from the tragedy, the kids went back. Betty didn’t, and that pained her the most: leaving her boys behind.

The halls were bleaker now; no one talked as much. People walked the school with bags under their eyes and constant looks of paranoia, growing a pair of eyes in the back of their heads: looking behind one’s back became but another part of daily routine, like a reflex, always expecting the worst. The human trust built on human interaction crumbled to pieces in the span of a month.

The glass had been replaced, the blood cleaned. The memory, however, remained. Sharp, painful, etched into each and every child like a knife in their stomach. Cafeteria now meant death. Window meant death. Dance meant death.

And the whispers followed.

_ I heard she made them fuck each other. _

_ No, she made them cut themselves and give their blood to her. _

_ Someone told me they planned the shooting. _

_ And that dance? Freaks. _

_ Freaks. _

_ Freaks. _

The rumors chased the boys like shadows; bad shadows, waiting for the right moment to drown them in darkness. Steve lost his supplier and his buyers. Buck lost the scarce sympathy he sometimes aroused. French lost his scholarship. Jesse didn't lose much, but then again, he didn't have much to lose.

The violence they suffered wasn't physical. Nobody wanted to be near them, to touch them. They had targets on their backs now, huge bull's eyes right in the center of their chests; nobody wanted to get shot by mistake.

The boys didn’t talk anymore. They avoided their eyes and scattered their glances, because they could still see OA in each other. Their invisible selves were now raw, and blood-crimson, and flesh and bones to the naked eye. They couldn’t bare it.

All but one.

Buck still watched them: carefully, discreetly; like someone approaching a dog who’s been hurt, trying not to get bitten by it.

When they caught him staring, the boys had different reactions: Steve looked like he wanted to punch Buck in the stomach. His face would turn red and he would scoff, like the effort it took to walk away was so strong as to produce such a sound from him. His hands would ball up into fists and shake involuntarily. Jesse stared back with pity behind his eyes, looking at Buck like he was someone clinging on to false hope.  “OA’s dead!” Jesse wanted to scream at the top of his lungs, so Buck would let it go. "She's dead and she isn't coming back!"  _Like before_ , he would have wanted to add, had he said anything, but everything seemed bizarre enough without him revealing any truths.

It all seemed a dream now.  Nothing appeared real, except for the fact that it had been. Buck couldn’t forget the texture of OA’s scars beneath his soft fingertips. He could still smell the smoke of a drowned candle in the middle of the night, the light dying, with OA's words still fresh in his mind. His muscles knew the five movements so well that he could dance in his sleep. And had, actually. Several times. Sometimes, he would wake in the middle of the night, with a blow to his chest still tingling on his skin, only to realize he’d done it himself. He remembered lunches, and how they all sat together and discussed theories and researched OA's story to find proof. He remembered the clear feeling, the conflicting and terribly unsure decision to clear his mirror of all that covered it. He could look at himself again and see, for the first time, something good. Someone worthy of helping an angel in her quest.

The remaining boy, however, looked at Buck with something other than pity or anger: French looked at him as if disappointed. And what hurt the most about it, was that he couldn’t figure out why. What had he done? He wasn’t acting any differently than the other boys. No one was handling the situation properly, so why single him out by staring back with such look in his eyes?

Perhaps Buck felt it more strongly —deep in his gut, like a rock hitting bottom— because of how he felt about French. Not that he would ever admit it.

Before OA, Buck had only thought of French occasionally, and almost always with a sense of jealousy blossoming deep within himself. He was the perfect boy Buck could never be. He wasn’t as good a student, as athletic or as diligent as French Sosa, and that drove him crazy, but only when he thought of it. He usually had other things in mind. 

Everything had changed when OA arrived. She’d gotten together a group of misfits if there’s ever been one, and made them share a bond closer than any other. They shared empathy for the girl who had lost everything. And belief. Because for a moment, no matter how short or long a time, the five of them believed what OA had told was true. Her love for Homer —and Homer himself— existed, along with the other prisoners and Hap’s terrible beating heart. The group had never felt such strong emotions, such disgust, and prideful sense of victory, and hopeless defeat, and gut-wrenching disappointment as they had all those dark, cold nights in the abandoned house.

Buck had begun to appreciate French in another light then —a dimmer light, perhaps, that strained his sight and forced him to look carefully, more intensely in his direction. French wasn't a good student so much as he was smart and clever in all that he did. He wasn’t so much athletic as he was strong and energetic. French wasn’t so much diligent as he was the best son a mother could ever hope to have. And he was kind, and understanding, and forgiving. French Sosa embodied all Buck _had_ wanted to be, and all he now wanted to be held by.

But the look in French’s eyes had changed from the pride of watching him sing to the disappointment of… what, exactly? What was he disappointed in? Buck didn't think it was fair. The lack of an explanation —or a clearer message— wasn't fair. Steve and Jesse were getting the cold shoulder from him. French looked the other way when they passed by each other in the halls. Yet he made sure to lock eyes with Buck Vu; to look at him with eyes full of incomprehensible meaning, words written in a language so foreign the younger boy wanted to rip all his hair out because he just _couldn't understand_.

At this point, Buck would rather have French's passive ignoring than his aggressive disappointment, but it appeared that wasn't up to him.

* * *

It was late in December, almost Christmas. In the short period of break he'd gotten, Buck had managed to forget what day it was. It was Thursday. A snowy Thursday night, cold as he never remembered having felt before. And cold meant ice-cream for him; it _screamed_ ice-cream.

With his nose red and running, his hands wrapped in wool mittens, and wearing more layers than a wedding cake, Buck sat in the grocery store parking lot and waited for something to happen (or at least until his ice-cream was no more). He looked up in search of a moon that refused to give him the pleasure of her shine. And the stars, too, had hidden behind the snow-clouds. The sky seemed empty, which he found sad. Humans could be empty, and boxes too, but not the sky. It was the one thing always full, wether the human eye saw the things that filled it, or not.

The sky seemed empty, but it screamed freedom. It offered the widest, tallest ceiling; not at all like the claustrophobic environment of home. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with air that stung his chest.

"Buck?" He heard behind him a low, strained voice. He turned around only to find a very shocked Alfonso staring back at him.

His face wasn't hard to read: the question had come out on its own. He hadn't intended on actually saying it; it'd been but a simple thought. His brows were raised in response to his own loud volume, and his face was as pale as his tan skin could ever allow it to be.

Buck was staring. He definitely was. French's face was halfway sinking into a thick wool scarf, his nose red and his eyes wide behind his heavy-rimmed glasses. To match his scarf, he wore a wool hat that covered his ears and pressed his curls to his forehead. It appeared to be a quick run to the grocery shop, for French wore a pair of worn-out sweatpants, some equally beaten-up sneakers, mis-matching socks and a bulky jacket that looked extremely warm. If there was something that French liked to keep, that was appearances. Buck knew Alfonso would never have gone out like that except with the absolute certainty that he would not bump into anyone in the way. And why should he ever doubt his certainty? It was freezing outside, and the only lunatic who dared to go out on weather like that was Buck.

Without so much as a single word, Alfonso dropped his eyes to the ground and quickly hurried into the shop, a white cloud of breath hanging in his wake.

The boy was left staring at the air in front of him, right at the space that had just been filled with all of French Sosa.

For the first time in months, Buck realized, French hadn't looked at him in disappointment, but in surprise. He didn't know wether that was for the better, or the worst.

Now the boy was left with two polar opposite choices: either he stayed where he was, quiet and unmoving in the cold air of night, shivering under his many layers, waiting for French to come back out and ignore him; or he could walk away. He could will himself into standing up and stretching his frozen limbs, blowing hot breaths into his gloved hands —one at a time, never letting go of the ice-cream—, and leave. 

But leaving, he knew, would mean letting go. Letting French's strange behavior get the better of him. If French's plan was to stare Buck into leaving him be, the boy wouldn't give him the pleasure of that victory. He'd stay.

The bells on top of the door chimed, signaling Alfonso's return. Buck heard his feet come to a stop just outside the store, and the voice of the man behind the counter telling French to close the goddamn door. He could feel his intense stare on the back of his neck, like a knife carving painful dents into his skin. His eyes remained focused on the wet pavement at his feet. His body tensed in reaction to Alfonso's glaring.

Buck was sure the expression on the other boy's face wasn't anywhere near the friendly, calm demeanor that Buck felt was fading from his memory of him. He was certain there was a growl to his poise, a purse set on his lips, or a deep frown between his eyebrows.

It felt like centuries had passed before something happened. The air around them seemed to remain still for the course of several year-long seconds, yet neither of them spoke a word. Only their breaths and the shuffling of French's feet were heard in the frozen night, and they echoed around Buck's brain, amplified by a thousand.

All of a sudden, and despite Buck's stubborn decision, perhaps due to the cold, or the staring, the silence, or the finishing of his ice-cream, the boy couldn't stay there a second longer.

He rose to his feet, limbs aching from the strain of keeping still, his eyes never leaving the ground. Buck felt French's small, almost unnoticeable gasp of surprise behind him.

In spite of that small show of protest, Buck started walking away, deeper into the parking lot and toward the exit, away from French.

And soon the shuffling feet turned into steps, and the breaths seemed to quicken and move around, Buck wasn't sure in which direction. His heart began to race at the prospect of French catching up to him, laying a  hand on his shoulder softly, as if to announce his presence, turning him around and finally,  _finally,_ explaining himself to Buck; but then the beating of his accelerated heart to came to a sudden stop.

The footsteps were heading away from him, somehow echoing in the empty parking lot.

Buck's heart, perviously stuck in his throat, suddenly dropped to his feet, and the quietest of weeps involuntarily left his lips.


	2. Asshole thoughts

Something changed after that night. Something shifted inside of him. Maybe it was the suddenness of their encounter. Yes, that must have been it. Being taken by surprise had never been French's cup of tea. Seeing the boy alone, perhaps. Or at night. There had been so many changes in the circumstances of their meeting that French couldn’t exactly pinpoint were the breaking point had originated.

He had gotten used to catching his eyes while in a loud, crowded place, his face visible thanks to the bright light of the fluorescent lamps atop them. And he was used to seeing his face, not the back of his head. Maybe what had caught him off guard was the fact that he was having ice-cream, and that he remembered that he once had said he liked cold things in cold weather, which had set in motion a train of thought that led directly to OA, a thing he had been trying to avoid thinking about for the last two months.

Perhaps it felt different because he had talked. His voice had felt so rough when saying his name, and only after that, had he realized that it had been months since he’d said it last.

It had been all kinds of different. But most of all, he felt that the walking away, the not turning, the not staring at him like a puppy who’s been kicked; was the strongest difference in his encounter with Buck.

And after that Thursday in the freezing cold of the store parking lot, Buck didn't look his way again. 

When classes resumed, French would hear the silence that accompanied the boy down the hall, how all of the voices quieted as he hurried past corridors and the cafeteria, shoulders slouched, as if to appear smaller than he already was. Head down, feet quick. 

It had been easier for French: he'd been popular before OA showed up. People weren't as hard on him as they were on the rest. 

That's why he got invited to the first party since the incident. _The party to bring back parties_ , as people were already starting to call it. A girl called Bobbi Kelsey was hosting it, in one of the biggest houses in town. Her father was away in a business trip, but she assured everyone that he would have been okay with the party had he been there to witness it or not. Some believed her, French didn't: her father was as much a drunk as his own mother, drowning in a bottle after the loss of his wife.

For Alfonso Sosa, there wasn't a thing that was more important than appearances, and so the time it took him to think about the invitation wasn't as long as anyone would have thought  —that is, anyone apart from Buck, who knew he'd jump at the chance to be popular again, like a fox jumps at a rabbit.

After the invitation, all of the boys he used to think were his friends came back like a flood, full force. The first few hours it happened gradually, with a 'Hey, French, what's up?' or a handshake-hug which men are so fond of. By lunch time that same day, his table was full to the brim, holding the majority of the lacrosse team and a couple of cheerleaders. It wasn't long until conversation was driven toward what had happened in the abandoned house: people were out of lies to tell, and now yearned for some truths.

"So, French, pray tell. What the fuck did y'all do up there?" asked Todd Winters, far from approaching the matter cooly.

Alfonso froze in place, plastic spoon halfway between the plate and his mouth. His heart started pounding against his ribs so heavily he suddenly felt it difficult to breathe. 

He had managed to keep it all bottled up inside of him, fearing retaliation from his own broken heart. To every mention of either OA, or the events that had led to her death —not that anyone knew the truth of the matter— French turned a deaf ear and a blind eye. It had been hard, what with the town buzzing with gossip and no activity entertaining enough to keep his mind off things, but he had managed, in his own way and almost flawlessly. He had turned to the only person he could: himself. Sunk deep in his own solitude, a turtle hidden, folding in on its own grief.

He forgot most of what he did on the nights that were truly severe, when all he'd managed to keep behind a thick door in the back of his head, came rushing back out. He would sometimes wake up with scrapes on his knuckles and a dent in his bedroom wall. It wasn't hard to connect the dots.

And just when he thought he was getting better...

"French, seriously, what happened?" Winters asked again, this time palming his shoulder vigorously, pulling Alfonso out of his trance.

"I don't wanna talk about it," he answered bitterly.

That had become his default state: "I don't wanna talk about it," or "not now," "maybe later," "I can finish the paper if you give me an extension, Mr. Nolan. I promise," "I don't feel like going to practice today."

"Leave him alone, Todd," a girl said beside him. Her name was Anna or Zanna or Hannah, French wasn't sure.  She put a testing hand carefully on his thigh and looked up at him with doe-eyes, "He'll tell us when he's ready." Her other hand went to his shoulder, where she gave what was intended to be a comforting squeeze, but came out rather violent and shaky. 

Not really meaning to, French looked up and his eyes found Buck immediately. Not that it was hard, he was sitting directly in Alfonso's line of view. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out wether it was on purpose that he'd sat there, or if it had been a mere coincidence. Both options had their pros and cons, and he listed them mentally as Buck's eyes met his: there wasn't a drop of whatever there had been in Buck's stare before the parking lot incident. Instead, rage seemed to burn deep in his chocolate eyes, or contempt. His eyes shifted ever-so-slightly —and for a second, maybe less— to the girl beside him, but only when he drew his stare away did French shrug her attempted consolation away.

"Banshee's right. Everything in good time," said Ranger Beckett, by far the nicest and the most mature out of the people crowding the table.

French communicated by gestures of the face his thanks to Ranger, who tipped an invisible hat as a response.

A loud rattle rumbled across the cafeteria, all the way over from the main entrance, and French caught glimpse of Buck's rather original bag-pack disappearing into the hallway.

* * *

Apparently, when you advertise your party as the comeback to all parties, everyone is going to show up —even those not invited.

By ten, the mansion-like house was full of both people and smoke. Bobbi Kelsey would have to air her house for a full week to get the smell of weed from the curtains and the sofas. But of course, she wouldn't have to worry about the cleaning up. She could hire a cleaning crew with one ninth of her monthly allowance. She just had to hide all the delicate decorations, and display cleverly placed barf buckets around the place.

The entire house smelled like sweat mixed with cheap deodorant and expensive perfume. The air felt sticky and unbearable.

When his friends parted ways with him and rushed to the keg everyone had been talking about for the last two days, French took it upon himself to find a window to sit by, so he could breathe and make the tightness of his chest disappear. _The price one pays to be on top again,_ he thought bitterly.

There was a bay window at the end of a hall in the third floor. As the stories increased, the amount of people walking around the halls did the opposite. The people there were the ones who wanted to have a quiet conversation, though French didn't know how useful that would be, since the blasting music reached the most secluded corners of the house. He was in luck, he needed no conversation, only air. It was windy outside, and all for the better: the tightness in his chest gave out, and he could breathe again. He inhaled deeply and tried not to think about much.

 His eyes shifted around the hallway, trying to identify everyone there, but he couldn't. Some people he hadn't seen before in his life. Others, he had never bothered to learn the names of. He wondered how many of them had actually been invited. He laughed at how little an  _actual_ invitation meant, and how everyone had made a huge deal about it when  _he_ had received one. It's not like anyone was checking at the door for bright-colored wristbands or anything. People just weren't that exclusive, he guessed. Even less so considering the circumstances and how everyone had been yearning for a party. 

And then, almost as if he'd summoned a familiar face by wanting to see one, he came into view. 

His breath hitched and his eyes grew as he realized the boy'd seen him, and there was nowhere to run to, unless he went past him and down the stairs. He hadn't been that close to him since the ambulance, he realized.

There was nothing for French to do but to smile a small smile and hope he would go away, but it had the opposite effect, prompting the boy to approach him warily.

"Can I sit here?" Jesse wondered, pointing at the empty space next to French.

The boy scooted over closer to the wall and made some more space for the one he had once considered his friend. French set his eyes to the ground, avoiding Jesse's. The carpet seemed two-toned, from the yellow light of the lamps and the silver light of the moon outside. The shadows were the only consistent colors: dark, looming black.

They stayed silent for a few seconds, neither of them really knowing what to say. 

Jesse took a deep breath and began, "How have you been?"

French hadn't expected anything else. From the three left at school —not counting himself—, Jesse had always seemed the most grounded. He wasn't as violent as Steve or as pitiful as Buck. He always looked calm, if a bit sad. But then again, so were the rest of them. Both Steve and Buck appeared too caring of OA; they'd believed her with such passion that her death had destroyed them. Jesse was handling it better, it seemed, either because the books in OA's house had changed his mind, or because he had never really believed her in the first place, which was unlikely. French figured if there was anyone he'd be willing to talk to again, that would be the least emotionally involved.

"Been better," he admitted aloud for the first time; a short answer, so he wouldn't notice whatever it was that French wanted to hide from him, "You?"

"Same," he sighed, "I've been thinking a lot." He looked up at the boy beside him. French could feel his stare on his side, almost demanding he looked at him, too. 

Alfonso, because he knew Jesse wanted him to ask, sighed and said, "About?"

"Everything. About the books, about..." He paused, "OA. Whether I believe her or not,"

"Look, Jesse." French went off, "I seriously don't want to be rude, but save it for the therapist, okay? I'm over it, Steve's over it," he hesitated for a fraction of a second, "Buck's over it; you should be, too,"

Jesse sat up against the wall, more serious now than he had been before, "Buck's not over it,"

A mixture of contradictory feelings erupted inside of him: he tried to fool himself into a state of surprise, to make himself believe that he didn't already know that. But of course Buck wasn't over it; he wouldn't have been acting the way he had if he'd truly let the matter go. The only hint at a change had been the last few weeks following the parking lot encounter, but French strongly suspected that the change had more to do with him than with wether Buck had abandoned hope or not.

"What?" he asked, faking surprise rather convincingly in hopes Jesse would tell him more about the boy.

"Yeah," he replied, slightly astonished at the fact that French would think otherwise, "He called me the other night at three in the morning or some shit like that, and started to babble on and on about a theory he had. A theory about  _her,_ "

"He called _you_?" French asked, attempting to mask the emphasis he put on the the last word, which conveyed his thoughts: why would he call Jesse when he could have called him? Then he reprimanded himself with a painful " _Why the hell would Buck ever call you?"_

Jesse nodded with a sly smile, "Yeah. He wants to set up a meeting at the old house."

His first reaction was a resounding no. No, no, no. He wouldn't be sucked into the crazy again. It had already ruined his present, and part of his future; he wouldn't let it destroy any more shit. Prairie Johnson was crazy. She was psychotic and ill and whatever else the doctors had diagnosed her with. She was a liar, but convincing liar at that —only then could French excuse Buck's behavior around and toward OA. Only then could he excuse his own cluelessness.

"I'm not going," he said, nonchalant.

After that, the conversation was pretty much over. Jesse let the matter go and asked instead about college. Only after realizing what a terrible, horrible, stupid idea that had been did he say goodbye and let French to himself.

He didn't last much longer. After about half an hour of sitting by himself, his mind plagued with thoughts he didn't want to have, Alfonso ditched his friends —who at that point were too drunk to even remember his leaving— and went straight home, to sleep Jesse's words off.

* * *

Cue Monday morning, school Monday, dreaded Monday, friends-not-drunk-enough-to-forget-I-ditched-them Monday.

Note-in-my-locker Monday.

Scribbled in black sharpie on a ripped piece of an F-graded Spanish test, the note read:

_11 pm. BBA's coming down. Steve too. Not sure about Jesse._

_Don't be an asshole._

 

 


	3. Pros and Cons

Analysis of the word  _asshole:_

Ass     —A person's bottom.

Hole —An opening through something.

—A hollow place in a solid body or mass; a cavity.

In the literal sense, an asshole is the peephole-like aperture located between someone's buttocks, where all the feces comes out of.

In the figurative yet most commonly-used sense, an asshole is someone who devotes their life to annoying and/or screwing over other people. Human feces, if you will.

In Buck Vu's sense of the word, asshole lately meant Alfonso Sosa, or so his note had led French to believe.

_Don't be an asshole._

That meant he had been being an asshole all this time. It meant Buck thought him an asshole.

French wouldn't really say it stung. It wasn't painful, or heart-wrenching, or earth-shattering. It was more a question of being shaken by it; not only by the words and the message they conveyed, but by the fact that there had been any words at all. He had long given up on the idea that Buck would ever speak to him again. And he understood that a note wasn't exactly talking, but it was the closest thing to it since that pathetic, quiet "Buck?" that he had uttered all those weeks ago. And now, there was the prospect of a conversation, if he dared show up that night at the house, but he was still very much on the fence of it. That the invitation —or rather the impolite demand— this time came from Buck altered nothing. The things that would be said wouldn't change because of it. French had had enough creepy to last him for the rest of his life.

Buck, who was staring at Alfonso while he read the note, hidden behind a wall at the turn of a corridor, witnessed how he crumpled the paper between his thin-fingered hands and put it in his pocket. The boy frowned at the contradiction of his actions, and at his own mixed feelings: he felt like punching him, slapping some sense into that jock head of his —though he knew how much sense it usually possessed, only not in this particular matter—, but also felt embarrassed that he had even tried.

He turned away, head down, and ducked into his algebra class.

Did Buck want him there? Yes. Was he aware of what would result of it? Yes. Or at least he hoped so. He liked to think he was prepared for the most-likely outcome, but he could never be completely sure. He'd thought he knew French before he completely defied all previous conceptions Buck had apparently made up about him.

There was one thing he was certain about: he couldn't have any more silence between them. He'd rather have French yell at him than quietly stare in disappointment. And if French wasn't willing to talk or scream or whisper, then Buck would force it out of him: he knew he was easily riled up, as demonstrated by Steve on several occasions. He'd yell at him until he responded.

But to achieve that, he first needed French to attend the meeting. Buck wondered whether he would do that on his own, or need outside encouragement.

* * *

"I'm not going. No way," French mumbled to himself, pacing back and forth in his small, tidy bedroom. The numbers on the clock by his bed marked the seven minutes that had passed since nine-thirty. "What for? To listen to Steve and BBA try to make sense of something that  _clearly_ won't ever make any?"

He refused to speak Buck's name aloud.

The pro-con list he'd made some hours before lay crumbled on the floor, beside Buck's note. The cons outnumbered the pros greatly. In fact, there were only two pros, unwillingly scribbled on the paper; two simple words:

  * Answers
  * Buck



But for some reason, the weight of those two things were giving the other side of the list a hell of a fight. Something inside of him—some obscure, usually hidden part of him— yearned to go, to relive those times in which he'd felt important, he'd felt that he mattered. His skin remembered with nostalgia the sting of turning off the heater and feeling the cold after an hour of warmth. Though he hated to admit it, he missed her calm voice narrating stories. No matter how false he believed her tellings to be, the girl had been real. She was buried somewhere in the local cemetery. She'd had a kind, serene air about her, almost ethereal. If he believed her, French could have easily seen in her an angel.

But he didn't. There was irrefutable proof against her.

Or so he thought.

It was all a matter of quantity versus quality: should he go because of the importance of the two-worded 'pro' side of the list? Or should he not go, due to the many reasons against it he had come up with? His strongest point against the meeting rested on the fact that he cared not for a thing that would be said there. Nothing any of them had to say would change his stubborn mind.

French threw himself face-first onto the carefully-made bed. The effort he had undergone when making (or attempting to make) the decision had worn him out. His head felt like it was about to explode. He had not gotten any homework done that day, no matter how in need of extra credit he was, if he was ever to get into college. He closed his eyes for a moment, resting them from all the looking and his mind from all the thinking. It was a shame he didn't have the capacity of keeping his mind blank. It somehow always seemed filled with one thought or another.

He only found solace in sleep now. And lately, not even his dreams were safe: they were plagued with images of OA, perhaps memories (by the time he woke up, he couldn't remember the details). He dreamed of eating dragonflies and spiders. He remembered a distorted version of the cafeteria accident; the faces of the people he knew weren't their faces, and the cafeteria was the cafeteria, but the small things were slightly off. There was a version of his dream in which he was the one with the gun in his hand; in another, he watched the scene from above, omnisciently; and sometimes, in the most terrifying and frequent of the versions, _he_ was OA, and his was the body shot dead.

He tried battling the drowsiness within him. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but his body soon gave in to what it thought would be quiet relief.

* * *

"Is anyone here?" French asked into the darkness that loomed before him. He pushed the tarp-door aside and walked into the house that contained so many memories. "Hello?"

The shuffling of feet reached French's ears faintly. It came from deeper into the construction, softly echoing in the empty, sad, half-built halls; and it gave him an idea of where everyone was.

It turned out that "everyone" was in fact only Buck Vu, who was sitting against a bathtub, headphones on, eyes closed. The shuffling he'd heard wasn't shuffling but light tapping of feet against a cement floor. Buck was moving his feet to the beat of a song French couldn't hear. He was awfully concentrated on it, brows knitted together, head swaying to the rhythm.

"You shouldn't do that," French spoke, but Buck remained oblivious to his presence. He repeated himself, louder this time.

There was a pause, then a sigh. Buck took off his headphones and slowly opened his eyes. He looked up at French, as if acknowledging his being there, but only grudgingly: "I heard you the first time." He sounded unamused, and spoke in a monotone that gave French the clear impression that he was angry. Buck didn't ask what 'that' was, as French had hoped, thus making the environment even more awkward that he'd thought it possible.

French had a moronic lapse in common sense as he wondered exactly why he was mad. Upon thinking about it for .2 seconds, he understood. Of course he was angry! He would have been, too, if their roles had been reversed.

A hard-rock, seemingly unbreakable silence set between them. It was charged with an electric current that threatened to explode at any moment. French's heart was stuck between his vocal chords: Buck had talked to him, and no matter how rude the words, words were words, French figured. He was willing to make plenty exceptions for the boy, for in any other situation French wouldn't have counted that as speaking. After everything they'd been through, he would never have thought the boy would ever talk to him again.

"Are the others coming?" French remained on his feet. He didn't dare sit down.

"Steve and BBA are. Jesse never said," Buck answered, his eyes looking out the hole that would have been a window.

"Do you still talk to BBA?" he asked, in an attempt to keep the unbearable silence from invading the room.

Mrs. Broderick-Allen had surprised them all with her invisible self: she was a calm, concerned soul. She would have done anything for them, given up anything. And she already had.

Buck nodded.

And then, no matter how much French tried avoiding it, silence. Heavy, damp silence. It chocked him, like water in his lungs. He could feel Buck noticed it too, and how painful it was, when he had only memories of long conversations and meaningful looks shared with him.

French kept his eyes glued to the ground; Buck refused to glance away from the darkness outside the pseudo-window. Trees ruffled their leaves at the edge of the forest, soft wind carrying the smell of pine-trees inside, along with the cold. Alfonso sat down, feeling the world weighing down his whole body. He was aware of everything that surrounded him: the small bits of cement under the palms of his hands, the broken piece of pipe sticking into his spine, the pine needles rolling under his boots and the damp, moldy air stuck in his throat.

Buck broke the silence: "Why?" His voice was in the brink of breaking.

"What?" French sighed, fully aware of what would come of the exchange.

The fight could be seen coming from miles away, like a lightning storm. The current in the air, the friction between them, was so strong French shivered.

"Why are you such an asshole?" Buck's eyes were focused on the outside. He was staring now, not simply looking; avoiding Alfonso's eyes by any means necessary. "Why are you  _so_ determined on being a dick?"

The accused frowned: "Where the hell is this coming from?" He sounded surprised, but the question was whether someone could be truly surprised if they knew exactly what was coming.

Buck finally looked at him, his eyes wide and full of disbelief. He opened his mouth and let out the most sarcastic of laughs French had ever heard him utter. And no wonder it was so —he was hiding many things behind it.

"You're not seriously asking me that," he stated, tone dead.

French knew Buck wasn't surprised. He knew he was enough acquainted with him to know better than to think him a good person. He wished it was the opposite, that Buck didn't know him, or at least that  _he_ himself didn't know Buck. He wished he didn't have the ability to read his expressions as easily as he could. French would have spared himself many things by not knowing the boy as well as he did. Like the English language, French was economical: he restrained himself in matters of both spoken words and feelings whenever he could. His life had become a thrilling rollercoaster of not achieving that restrain, no matter how much he tried.

Something inside French suddenly gave up, let go, and he said: "Yes, I am."

"Did you even think before asking?" Buck was accusing him now, of either neglect or plain arrogance.

"Yes," he lied.

And the lie grew even bigger by his knowing where Buck's —frankly justified— remark had come from, though he was painfully unaware of the extent of the things his actions had caused. He didn't know about the crying and the crushing reflections that had plagued the boy's mind for the last few weeks; about the harmful thoughts that had made him wonder if he'd done something wrong. If the fault rested —somehow— on him.

"You're such an asshole!" Buck yelled at the top of his lungs, abruptly disrupting the peace and quiet of the abandoned house. "It was about damn time someone told you that, you know? You walk through life thinking you're little Mr. Perfect, that everybody loves you and that you're never responsible for the bad shit that happens around you, right? But boy do I have news for you! You're a dick. A big grade-A asshole. You shit on people with no consideration for their feeling whatsoever, and without realizing the impact your actions actually have on people! You have no empathy, and you're not half as smart as you think you are! Knowing algebra and American history doesn't make you better than anyone else, and until you fucking learn that, you're gonna be fucking alone!"

That was the most words French had ever heard Buck say at a time. And his surprise didn't come —again— from discovering a new piece of the puzzle that was Buck Vu, but from his defying of the erred conceptions French had of him. The boy Alfonso had painted in his head would never have used so many curses in a single string of speech. He was a good guy, a nice guy; everything French hoped he could be.

"Well—" French stammered. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, Buck, but—"

"Hurt me?" Disbelief tinted his words. "You didn't  _hurt_ me." He was mocking in the eyes and in the phony smile plastered upon his lips that failed to show the shyness that was so typical of him. Anger erased all other known features of Buck Vu. "You were an asshole and you—!"

He stopped talking abruptly. He raised his eyes to the ceiling. The low whisper of something cracking reached their ears, and suddenly part of the ceiling crumbled down on the boy's body. A mountain of rubble violently buried Buck in only seconds.

French only realized he was screaming when his throat dried from the dust around him, and he began choking.


	4. Clarity

_ Shit, shit, shit. Cold, cold, cold. _

Like on the pro side of his list, there were only two thoughts in French's mind, which I will not disclose, either to keep you on edge, or to hide the fact that your narrator doesn't have all the answers you're looking for.

His legs were racing down the street as fast as they could, attempting to catch up to the rhythm of his mind. He felt something weird with his feet. They were moving too fast for him to see, but he was fairly certain that he had his shoes on the wrong feet. As he reached the cul-de-sac and drifted his path from a flat street to an steep hill, he began to feel air escaping him, but postponed the pain in his chest for when he actually had time for it. The cold wind stiffened his fingers and reddened his nose.

He had to get there, quickly. The clock had marked 12:20 pm when he'd snapped awake. He needed to move faster.

Perhaps out of habit or maybe consciously doing so, he'd left the door to his house open ever so slightly; only a small crack, letting the warmth out, letting the cold —and something else, he hoped— in.

After what felt like years of continuous running, French finally got to the door, which he slammed right into due to the momentum he'd kept all the way up. His shoulder and arm took the blow and absorbed its force, sending a rush of pain down his right limb. Had he hit the door with any more violence, he was sure he'd have dislocated something.

"Is anyone here?" He had been very close to yelling, but somehow the overwhelming silence made him rethink it. It felt like screaming at a funeral.

It was just like he remembered it: dark and ominous. He realized his own mind had shifted things around in his dream, because the house in it wasn't the house he was standing on in that moment. His dream had distorted some details of the place, but his mind still recognized it for what it was.

A moment passed until he received an answer.

"Upstairs," said a female voice in a soft, clear tone. BBA.

Something inside French suddenly deflated, as if a balloon had been growing in his chest and only after hearing someone there had he realized it was real. He wasn't dreaming this time. They had waited for him.

He rushed up the unfinished stairs, still panting from lack of air, not giving his heart a moment's rest. At the top of the steps, a scene that he thought he'd never again see lay before him: four people sat in a circle surrounding a few small candles, which were close to going out due to French's lateness. The candles lit every one of the faces grimly, and the expressions in them ranged from disdain to pleasure. Four pairs of eyes focused on him, and he realized those four pairs had more of an effect —a punch-to-the-gut effect— on him than any other explicitly aggressive staring that strangers had inflicted on him. What he'd shared with the four of them had filled their gazes with meaning and with the ability o make him feel regret. Or perhaps sadness, he couldn't really tell.

BBA was the only one smiling at him. Steve's jaw was clenched in place, brows knitted together. Jesse looked surprised, but French thought it was more due to being caught there, when he'd given the clear impression of not wanting to go, rather than the fact that French had shown up. When looked at Buck, he found on his face a sound expression. Calm. Almost non-existent. Alfonso wondered wether Buck knew he'd come. In spite of the hour-and-a-half delay, there he was. He hoped, well in the back of his mind, almost as a thought that did not entirely belong to him, that it was Buck the one to force everyone to wait for him. He knew that hadn't been the case, but there was nothing wrong with wishing it were so.

"Sit down," prompted BBA, who had by now been established as the moderator of the party, a polite bridge between the tense boys.

French did as he was told.

The woman turned to Buck with a smile: "You called us here, why don't you tell us why?"

He shuffled in his improvised seat for a second, searching for the words to begin.

"I have a theory," he spoke, small at first, but gaining confidence as he remembered that these were —or had been, at least— his friends. "About OA and what happened to her," he paused, looked around in search of disapproval and upon finding none, he continued: "We've been thinking the whole dimension thing wrong."

Everything was slowly setting into place, everyone's shoulders slouched as they relaxed and their curiosity found itself sparking alive. It was all so familiar. For no more than a few seconds, French forgot everything prior to that moment and found himself closing his eyes and waiting for her to start speaking.

"We've been thinking that the only way to another dimension were the movements, and we've been assuming that every time OA died, she stayed in this one; that she came back to the same place she'd left. But what if she didn't?" He looked around finding only puzzled looks around him. "Ok, we have to think of it like this,"

He stretched to grab his backpack and got from it a pencil and a notebook. He drew four lines and next to each he wrote, from bottom to top: "drowned," "hap," "shot," "?" and from each of the lines, he drew an arrow pointing to the next above it.

Everyone leaned in to see Buck's careless scribbles.

"Each line represents a different dimension. The first at the bottom is the dimension in which OA was young, yeah? And when she drowned, we assumed that she came back to the same place, right?" Two nodded, "Well, what if we were wrong? What if every time OA dies, she comes back in _another_ dimension?"

Jesse and Steve shared looks. BBA tried to catch French's eyes, to share her feelings with one of her boys, but his gaze were solely focused on Buck.

"Think about it. Somewhere out there there's a place in which little Nina is buried deep underground, covered by two feet of snow. Her father grieves her every day, or maybe he's dead, too, resting next to her. There's another place where Homer keeps thinking Hap will drag Prairie's body back down the stairs, all the time hoping she managed, somehow, to get away. But Hap comes back down two days later and announces that she didn't wake back up. Homer breaks his fist punching the window. Scott, whom the other two would have never expected to cry, broke down in sobs. Rachel didn't speak a words for weeks. And they never got the movement, or even the idea of it, and they never escaped." Buck swept his eyes through the circle and came upon a pair of glossy eyes, "And then there's us. Sitting in an abandoned house, thinking her dead yet refusing to visit her grave just to keep alive the illusion that she isn't for a little while longer. And somewhere else, OA woke up in a hospital bed, us five around her, smiling like idiots.

A silence deeper and heavier than the one in French's dream settled over the entire house. A tear quickly caught had began running down Steve's cheek; he was staring at the ground, hard. Each was focused on something else, not really looking but rather aggressively not-looking, much aware of the other four people in the room.

French was no less confused than the others. It sounded quite possible. Within the parameters of expanded reality that OA had supposedly taught them, it seemed a rather viable alternative to admitting she was dead —really dead— and that she'd never come back.

But Alfonso couldn't forget that the realty she'd shown him wasn't the one he knew and experienced. Inter-dimensional travel was a thing of science fiction novels.

And the books. Whatever he did, he couldn't forget the books. Maybe because he had been the one to find them, and silently hoped he'd contributed to uncovering the truth. How much of a coincidence could something be until they could see that it wasn't? Homer, Russia's aristocracy history? The truth was staring at them right in the face. She'd made it all up. It was a good story, he had to admit, but it was merely that: the work of a fucked-up head.

With a small voice, trying not to upset any of the present, French said: "What about the books under her bed?"

Everyone shifted their eyes then, from their own voids of sadness and to French, by far the least welcome, ergo the least fitted to say anything at all, given his skepticism.

Instead of raging against him or staring in defeat, Buck turned to Steve and signaled with a hand for him to speak.

"The books are bullshit," he said, matter-of-factly. "OA was blind most her life. She only knew how to read braille. And even when she got her sight back, there was no way she could read a normal book without Hap finding out she could see again. Think about it: she couldn't have learned to read and actually have the _time_ to read those books after she came back. It's impossible."

French was staring at nothing in particular, but most definitely staring. He needed a few seconds to process Steve's words and form a coherent response to them. He was divided: on one hand, he felt stupid and foolish. Steve's theory was flawless. Wherever she'd been, even if it truly wasn't with Hap, the books proved nothing judging by the time line they'd established. Perhaps he felt that way because the answer was so blatantly obvious, so under his nose, that he was ashamed that it hadn't been him the one to come up with it. On the other hand, he still was reluctant to admit her story was true. He had a hard time admitting he was wrong, he always had.

Alfonso couldn't say a thing. He didn't want to open his mouth to admit defeat or to keep up with the pointless struggle for the last word. Everyone looked convinced when he glanced around the circle. He made up his mind to stay quiet and only listen. It wasn't like anything would change if he believed.

"That sounds plausible," admitted BBA, whose faith in OA had not once been questioned, "And if what Buck is saying is true, the movements did work. Maybe not in the way we expected..." she trailed off, and a sudden chill went through the room, making everyone shiver.

Looks scattered everywhere, to the trees, the ground, the ceiling. Legs and knees came closer to chests and arms wrapped around bodies to protect from either the cold or the memories.

The oldest present, the wisest, the one no longer biased by hormones of adolescence, spoke: "I know we all want to avoid talking about it, or even thinking about it, but she —at least in this here, this now— is dead. She's gone, and it hurts, but we need to accept it to be able to heal," she paused for a long while, as her words sunk into the young minds of the four boys around her, "I think I grew to love her. She was such a pure soul and with a heart so big... Sometimes I drive out here at night, when I can't sleep. I drive past this house at least ten times, deciding wether I should go in or not. I never did, until today." Buck smiled knowingly, "I haven't been to her grave yet, either. I tried to, but every time, I broke down in the cemetery parking lot. I-I have," she stammered, "five wilting bouquets at home and—" her next words got stuck in her throat. The boys waited a few seconds to see if she recovered, but were instead faced with glinting tears and sobs muffled by a wrinkly hand.

Buck was the first to react. Being the most affectionate (perhaps because of the affection his home life lacked), he crawled to the crying woman and after barely a second of hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her and buried his head on her shoulder. Jesse followed, leaning over to his left, where she was sitting, and stretching his arms around them both. Steve and French looked at each other momentarily, driving their eyes away as soon as they remembered their present circumstances. Neither of the two made a move to follow the other boys, who held a weeping woman between the two of them. Alfonso could tell Steve wanted to curl up against them and cry, too, but he also knew he wouldn't. Not if he was trying to prove to him how well he was handling it all.

In an attempt to let him have it his way, French drove his eyes farther away still, to the opposite side of where Steve was sitting. When he felt that enough seconds had passed, he turned around and saw his blond curls nuzzled against BBA's shoulder, a hand tightly gripping hers and the other stroking her hair softly.

After that, no one discussed what had been said. Not one shared their opinion on either of the theories. Some, because they were still processing all the new information. Others, because they knew believing would change absolutely nothing. Believing would only grant them the small happiness of thinking her life continued, despite her dying, which was no different than believing in heaven, French realized. Only this particular heaven would be another Earth-like place; a place that would spear her no suffering.

* * *

 French fidgeted with a loose string of his jacket as he waited for everyone to leave. He was repeating a handful of words over and over in his head. At some point, they had formed a speech, or what resembled one. Now they seemed random, messy and they no longer made any sense. Still, perhaps to ignore the fact that he had no idea what he'd say, or to fool himself into thinking he wasn't lost, French stubbornly continued with his self-appointed task. _Stupid, no, look, I'm, realize, eyes, Buck, sorry, you, please, asshole, disappointed, it, sorry, her, was, maybe, sorry, Buck, sorry, idiot, sorry._

Everything around him lost its sharpness. He no longer felt the cold of the room, and the voices of his friends faded away into the background. He couldn't focus on anything but the goddamn words. It was like memorizing a speech that had been cut apart and glued back together by a child. It was impossible to decipher.

So consumed in his own thoughts he was that he didn't hear various pairs of feet go down the stairs.

When he recovered, shaking his head, and heard no one about, he panicked. Two seconds! He'd zoned out for two seconds and they were already gone. He couldn't believe he'd missed yet another chance. He felt like being swallowed by the ground, never to be seen again.

Alfonso got on his feet clumsily, his balance slightly off and his legs tickling as the blood flowed back to them. He swayed on his feet as he stood, fairly dizzy, and walked toward the dark hole that hid the stairs inside it.

"French?" He heard behind him.

His heart began beating out of his chest, as did Buck's. Other than that first word, the rest escaped the boy. It wasn't like he'd been planning on saying anything to French, he had hoped that the words would come to him at the right moment. But now they were nowhere to be found.

French turned around and scouted the darkness in search of the face that was so familiar to him. When he found it, he couldn't figure out wether to smile at him or not. Did he deserve to appear happy after all he'd put Buck and the others through? Had he kept to himself the books —even though they now agreed they were meaningless—, it would have saved them a whole lot of suffering at the time of the discovery. So it's only fair to say that his muscles got confused at the mixed signals from his brain, which also wanted to smile widely at all costs, and ended up showing for it a grimace, a half-smile, half-serious monstrosity. The tension on his face told him his features must have looked like those of a mad man, and he stopped.

"Do you have a minute?" Asked Buck, barely louder than a whisper.

"Yeah," French let out a strangled sound that only barely resembled the word he'd attempted to say.

He turned back from the stair-hole and walked toward the boy, stopping at a distance that seemed fairly diplomatic. Not too close, not too far. His eyes were still glued to his fingers, which hadn't stopped played with the string of his jacket.

"Do you think we'll ever come back here?" Buck wondered, his eyes off on a quest to find French's.

Alfonso thought about it. Would he? Perhaps. The night had provided what it had promised. He had found himself with throat sore from holding back impulses, but the scorching pain felt good, somehow; it reminded him that he could, in fact, feel.

French was unaware that Buck's question had been meant to be understood a different way. He'd meant "Are  _you_ coming back here?"  But French was buried so deep in his own lie, the world and circumstances he'd created in his head, that he would have never caught on to that meaning. He thought Buck hated him, and with all the reason in the world. He was ready to beg on his knees for forgiveness.

However, French concluded, decluttering his brain, the meeting that night hadn't felt like an epilogue. It hadn't felt like the end. There was no swelling music and a cut to black. There hadn't been a bittersweet taste on his tongue. But it also hadn't felt like the beginning. There hadn't been narration or much laughter. Instead, it'd felt like the resolution of the conflict. Almost reaching the end.

And now, hopefully, the resolution of the romantic storyline, or perhaps its unavoidable complication.

"I think so," French admitted, both to Buck and to himself, "I mean, we're still paying rent, aren't we?"

The joke was a test of the waters, and when the boy smiled, almost reaching a chuckle but not quite, French's entire body relaxed.

"That we are," the boy answered, some life returning to his eyes. And with that life came the tiresome revival of French's smile.

"Have you talked to the others?" Alfonso dared to ask.

"I guess so, but only because the exchange of spoken words constitutes a conversation. There wasn't much substance to it," he answered, almost as if laughing at himself.

"How come?"

"I'm guessing, much like with you, they would rather not talk about it." As always, Buck nailed his guess right in the head. 

"Yeah," French breathed out, finally telling at least  _some_ of the truth.

The silence that Alfonso had long dreaded —both awake and asleep— finally set between them, but this time it felt different. It was charged not with rage but desperate yearn to give and receive explanations. The silence wasn't strained, it wasn't awkward or tense. It felt familiar, like a lazy Sunday morning drinking coffee while looking out a window to a rainy outside; like a midnight drive through an empty road, or a meeting in a grocery store parking lot one snowy December night.

"Buck," French said. The taste of his name had changed: it wasn't bitter anymore, it didn't weigh on his tongue; it tasted of banana ice cream and toothpaste. "I wanna apologize," and with those simple words, something in his mind suddenly clicked, and he knew exactly what to say: "I've been a dick to you for so long. Ever since OA died, I became this huge ass —well, maybe even before that..." his voice drifted off as he contemplated the thought. "Anyway, I think it's because I was sad. I don't know. What I do know is that you don't deserve it. You don't deserve all I did to you. Buck, you're—"

"Shut up." The boy spoke, face serious.

"What?" A rush of panic caught French off guard.

"You don't get to do that. Blame yourself. You can't," his tone gave no room to doubt —he wasn't budging on this one. "I realize now how we've all been coping in our own way."

French stared deeply into his brown eyes. His brain was slow to catch the meaning of his words, but he could read his expression in a heartbeat: it was calm and soft; he was sure of his every utterance. He sounded just like Buck, and French could not believe he had forgotten what that was like, how his words were compassionate and his eyes shone in kindness every time he looked at them.

"We were talking, before you came," Buck smiled to the ground, somehow shy, "BBA's taken up yoga," he giggled, "and Jesse says he's been eating his weight in Hershey's kisses."

French felt embarrassed. He dropped his eyes to the ground and said: "That doesn't compare to ignoring your friends for weeks. I'm sorry," he finally, after hours of painful introspective, admitted it. Aloud. In front of the one most affected by his actions. He was sorry.

"I was really mad at you at first," Buck confessed, "I couldn't figure out what I'd done for you to look at me like that."

"You did nothing!" French wanted Buck to know that more than anything, "It was me! I was mad at myself for believing OA, and I was mad at her for lying and for dying, I was mad at everyone for the whispers and at my mom for not caring, but never at you!"

The air went still. The wind outside stopped ruffling the leaves and the frogs silenced their singing. Buck smiled wide, his eyes getting smaller, teeth showing.

"Really?"

French beamed, a clear consequence of Buck's contagious smiling. "Yeah," he sighed, letting out all the air he'd been holding in. "I mean, I get why you thought that, and it's completely my fault and I'm sorry —I was an asshole, I can see that now."

"Wow," Buck said, "I thought this would be a lot harder."

"What do you mean?" He frowned in accordance with his confusion.

"I thought it would take long for you to talk to me.  _Actually_ talk. I thought I'd have to scream an answer out of you." Buck's smile didn't falter for a second.

"You might have to, somewhere down the line." French said, only to be surprised by his own words. He dropped his gaze to the ugly, damp floor and scratched the back of his neck, embarrassed.

Buck turned pink, but one could barely notice the room was so dark.

The boy took a few steps forward, his legs shaking violently. With his heart both beating out of his chest and stuck in his throat, he approached a French reluctant to look up. The latter's blood rushed faster than ever through his veins, until he could hear his pulse in his ears — _thum thum, thum thum_. What was happening?

"I didn't know you liked..." Buck began saying.

French laughed dryly, not at Buck but rather at himself, "Well, I don't have the strength _you_ have to tell everyone I'm into guys,"

"... me." he finished. "I didn't know you liked  _me._ "

Alfonso's eyes shot straight up. His brows almost reached his hairline he was so surprised. But Buck had taken one step too many and was closer to him than French had anticipated. His eyes somehow sparkled in the darkness, a beacon of gentleness and grace.

"Sorry," Buck apologized, taking a step back.

And as he felt his chance slipping away between his fingers, French took the only decision that had meant anything up until that moment.

He kissed him.


	5. Epilogue

If one were to look at the scene from afar, it would have looked like nothing was really happening. Four people standing around a tombstone wasn't strange after all, specially in a cemetery. But upon closer observation one would notice the little things: there was only one adult in the party, a woman. She was smiling. Not with malice but with the utmost love. There was a tall young man of yellow curls, his face contorted in his attempt to contain tears. He gripped a bouquet in his right hand, knuckles white as bone. There was a short, fuller boy, he held a small wolf plushie and his shoulders trembled as the sobbed silently. The older woman was rubbing his back softly. One might have even though she was his mother. There was another boy who wore glasses and a big, warm coat. He wasn't crying, but the expression on his face was unmistakably sad. He, too, held a bouquet. And something else. Something hidden under his coat. If one were to listen carefully, stand very close and with hawk-like eyes inspect the scene, one would notice a small boy, safely hiding between the ruffles of the bigger boy's clothes. His arms tight around his waist, head buried between the folds of his sweater, eyes tightly closed, refusing to look at the ground where wild flowers had begun growing, despite the cold hands of winter holding on for dear life, refusing to let spring take it's rightful place. The taller, older boy rubbed his shoulders lovingly.

Even from up close one would not have been able to tell wether the small figure was crying or not. His body did not move. But when he finally raised his head and looked at the headstone, there was a wet spot on his boyfriend's sweater, a reminder not of his weakness but of his ability to love.

No one spoke a word. Nobody wanted to leave. They stood there for a little over an hour, but it felt like only seconds had passed when Jesse regrettably announced his departure.

"I have to go," he croaked, throat sore from the crying. Everyone smiled at him sadly, some even with pity, and said their goodbyes.

In turn, BBA, feeling the weight of the long minutes settling on her hips and her legs, kissed the tips of her her fingers and lightly pressed them on the headstone. She murmured a few words that the boys did not hear and wiped a tear from her cheek. She walked toward her boys and hugged each of them with such love and care that some tears sprung back up.

A few minutes after she left, Steve placed his bouquet against the headstone and turned to look at the two remaining boys. "French," he said quietly, "can I talk to you for a second?"

Alfonso looked down at Buck and silently, without words, communicated that he'd be right back. A month after their first kiss in the dusty, cold upper floor of the abandoned house, they'd learned to understand the little cues, the quiet requests and unspoken agreements between them. 

Without Buck's body against his, Alfonso felt the sting of pain caused by unexpected cold hitting his side.

The two older boys left Buck beside OA's grave and walked toward the edge of the cemetery. 

"Look, French," Steve began, "I know we've never been the best of friends. I even hated you in the beginning. You were such a self-absorbed asshole." He paused, "But then again so was I." French looked only mildly surprised at this revelation. "But now I know better. I know that you hide stuff from us. Hell! I don't even tell you guys everything. But I know. We all do, dude. We see how you are with BBA, I'm guessing you're just like that to your mom. And I see how you are around Buck. Ever since you guys got together you've been someone else." Both boys smiled, one turning pink, the other rather proudly. "Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I want us to move past everything. At least for the sake of the others, what do you say we cut it out, once and for all?"

Steve felt awkward doing it, but he extended his hand to French anyway. Swallowing his pride, the latter shook the former's hand after only seconds of staring at him with a frown and an amused smile. In the handshake there was no sense of superiority from either of them. They were two smart boys feeling adulthood with the tips of their fingers. They had to let go of their childish behavior one day, and they weren't sure an opportunity quite like this would come up again.

They walked back to Buck after the deal had been struck, mulling over what had happened.

"What was that about?" Asked Buck, taking French's hand when he came within his reach.

"Oh, nothing," French shrugged, "Steve wanted to apologize for being a dick all the time."

"I'm not deaf, you know?" Steve exclaimed a bit further back.

All three of them laughed, and it was the best goodbye present they could ever have given OA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for reading. Thank you for patiently waiting for my sporadic and totally-not-scheduled updates. Your comments and kudos meant so much to me, so thank you thank you thank you! I loved writing this and I hope you liked reading it, too. You can leave me suggestions for future The OA fics that you'd like to read, I'm always open to new ideas!
> 
> I'm thinking of doing a part two of this titled: What She Left (in the rocky basement) ((or something like that, I need to mull over it still)). It's going to be a bit shorter than this, I'm guessing, but quite similar in that it's going to be a sort of continuation of what Homer, Scott, Rachel, Renata and maybe even Hap felt when OA didn't come back to them. Stay tuned for that!


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